The Love Boat

When Mary and I were in college, we had very little money to spend on “luxury” items like going out to a movie and dinner, the fraternity dance, concerts, etc.  I recall quite vividly many Saturday nights spent going to Mass in the mental hospital located on the IUPUI medical campus and splitting a can of Campbell’s soup in the nurses’ dorm at Wishard Hospital for dinner.  We followed that with a big bowl of popcorn and sat down to watch a Saturday night lineup of Fantasy Island, The Love Boat, NBC News, and finish it off with Saturday Night Live.  Yep, we were really stepping out on approximately 57 cents plus the church contribution.  Funny how those little green pieces of paper dictate your social life.  Anyway, The Love Boat has to be in the top 10 of all- time most lame shows ever.  Yes, there were new celebrities each week, which more often than not, were just washed-up performers who couldn’t get another gig.  Ah, The Love Boat – a place where all of the world’s problems were solved in 48 minutes.  Not only that, but the problems were solved in really cheesy ways with real cheesy characters who had really cheesy lines.  Why didn’t we just go for a walk instead…oh that’s right, it wasn’t a very safe place to walk at night.  The good thing about this time in our life was that I sat next to the most beautiful girl in the world pretty much every Saturday night back then and still get do today.  Except now we are asleep by 9:30 on a good night and can afford our own bowl of soup.  I am just glad that we’re still not doing our penance assignment of The Love Boat.

You won’t be to solve all of the problems in the world in a 40 minute segment.  You’ll have to keep at it to make a difference.  Don’t fall into the “microwave society” mindset of instant solution.  Nope, you’re gonna have to work for it.  Our highest stakes test is ISTEP, which doesn’t take place until March and then again in early May.  If you want your kids to be ready, you have to start building the foundation now.  You will have to use your time wisely.  You will have to make the most of every opportunity. You will have to use RtI period wisely. You will have to use formative assessments how they are supposed to be used.  You will have to provide feedback in a meaningful way to kids.  You will have to form great relationships with your students and colleagues.  You will have to use best practices in your classroom.  You will have to make a difference.  With all due respect to Gopher, Capt. Stubing, Doc, Issac, and Julie, you can’t just get buy a ticket on The Love Boat and watch it all float away.  You will have to get after it on a daily basis.  You can see some great results if you start now.  Don’t wait for Saturday night.  Besides, it’s all reruns.

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No NFL games this weekend.  On the 9^th, the Browns host Michael Vick and the Philadelphia Eagles on the shores of Lake Erie.  We plan to play “dog” coverage on defense.  Yep, that was a cheap shot, but I took it.

Random survey – what are, in your opinion, the top three worst TV shows of all time?  Here’s mine = Three’s Company, Good Times, and Diver Dan. 

Everyone is a Genius #1

Albert Einstein…pretty smart guy…developed that little thing called the Theory of Relativity.  This theory caused a revolution in physics.  Unless you totally avoided the science hallway at your high school, you probably have heard of the famous equation e = mc2.  In a nutshell, this shows that matter and energy are identical as energy is equal to mass and the speed of light squared.  The speed of light is 186,000 miles per second, which is just under the speed limit on the Dan Ryan.  Einstein had many things to say and our youngest daughter pointed out one of her favorites to me, “Everyone is a genius but if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”  Think on that for a second.  What you may not know about the man that many consider to be the smartest man ever is that he had difficulty speaking as a child.  After years of the medical field studying this delay, they found that many brilliant people develop speech relatively (there’s a form of that word again) late in childhood. Today, that delay is called Einstein Syndrome. Further, Einstein failed his first university entrance exam…yep, he had to go to trade school and later retook the exam and beat it like narcs at a biker rally.  Physicists all over the world are sure glad that Einstein wasn’t judged by his lack of writing ability or his vague knowledge of social sciences.

What’s all of this have to do with teaching?  Over the next 180 days, you will be asked to judge your students by multiple means of assessment.  Some of them are coming to you as exceptional writers, some are not.  Some are coming to you as outstanding young mathematicians, some are not.  Some are coming to you are incredible critical thinkers, some are not.  Some of them are coming to you as tremendous athletes, some are not.  The point is that in your class, which should be the most important class in the school, what are you banking your judgment on?  What is essential learning in your classroom look like?  What are the big ideas that you are trying to teach?  If you know those answers, then the next ones to get in that loop are your students!  They need to know your expectations.  They need to know what you want them to get smarter about.  They need to know what you are trying to teach them.  They need to know how they will be assessed.  They need to know how your content is relevant to their lives.   Often, the last ones to know what we want them to learn are the ones that are supposed to be doing the learning.  That simply does not make sense, even though it happens far too often.  On your never erased to-do list – tell them these things now and keep on telling them.  Now, if you do not have answers to the questions above, then there is key return form for you to fill out.